Budget Mapping: Increasing Citizen Understanding of Government via Interactive Design

New web technologies have the potential to make the promises of e-government a reality. Displaying data in a manner that is easy for average citizens to understand increases comprehension and engagement significantly. Specifically, this paper examines how the display of municipal budget data via web mapping technology allows citizens to visualize how the budget affects their lives and neighborhood. In this study, citizens accessing municipal capital budget data via the budget mapping tool exhibited a higher comprehension of the budget and interest in interacting with city council members about the budget than citizens using current resources available on the city website.